Reading and Writing (but no 'rithmetic)

I've been reading Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, a book whose cover promises that it is "Some Instructions on Writing and Life". I always feel like a dork for repeating that line of obvious promotional claptrap, but in this case it's actually true. I can't get through any one of the (many, and short) chapters in this book without having a terrible urge to write the next Great Novel.

Every so often I get urges to write. I dabbled in fiction (mostly of the bad Mary Sue variety) when I was a teenager, but for the last four years my writing has been confined to essays and talks for QCF. However, now that I'm staring down the abyss of my life post-undergrad (which, for a geek like me, is a scary prospect) I'm realizing that there was a reason why I liked writing essays so much. I am a writer, for better or for worse, and it seems like I need to produce words every so often for my own health. (For instance, I was feeling inexplicably bad when I started this post, but just typing this is helping me feel -- just as inexplicably --better.)

The question remains which sort of words I should produce. I've been considering for a while now that I should have a seperate Japan blog as a way of letting everyone who wants to read a semi-sanitized travellogue while this blog can remain a dumping ground for personal angst/weird ramblings. More recently it's occured to me that I should perhaps start a religion blog -- somewhere I can feel free to write down notions that occur to me regarding Jesus and his buddies without feeling like I'm inflicting my faith on anyone who doesn't want to read about it.

When I was younger, I tried to keep a journal. Actually, I tried to keep several journals. I still have most of them -- each with one, two, or maybe three entries before I stopped writing. The only journals I kept up on as a kid were brief travellogues which I kept writing mostly because I knew Biku would want to read them. The idea of having different blogs appeals to me, becuase I write much better when a) I'm typing and b) I have a perceived audience who are reading what I write.

Despite Anne Lamott's very excellent encouragement, I don't think I'd be able to write a novel. I mean, I know I haven't tried very hard, but I have trouble imagining characters other than me or a vaguely modified version of me, and I don't think I have the skills of observation necessary in order to see and learn how to describe the world around me. Fiction is, in Alice Munro's phrase, the marvelous clear jelly which takes a lifetime to learn how to make, and I don't think I have either the right ingredients for that recipe.

But I still need to write. It's like some kind of drug which I'm hopelessly addicted to, and suddenly cut off from. I have to find new ways to get my fix, new ways to get the words that parade around inside my head out in ways that will satisfy me and (perhaps) interest others.